Marginalia
Not essays; earlier than essays. Research notes, book reviews, craft thoughts… the archive of attention before it is catalogued.
28 June 2026 · Research Notes
Spent the afternoon with the registrar’s daughter, who remembers the pipes being tuned around the paper. “The organ sounded different those years,” she said, “fuller.” A decade of a town’s children, improving the acoustics…
The Ministry of Records11 June 2026 · Book Review
Her books are choirs pretending to be transcripts. What I keep stealing from her: the interviewer’s silence as a structural element. The question you do not ask is a form of paragraph break.
Craft30 May 2026 · Writing Process
The prologue has been rewritten eleven times and is worse than version four. I have printed version four and taped it above the desk as a hostage negotiation. Sometimes revision is just remembering.
The Ministry of Records14 May 2026 · Publishing
Read it once, get angry, close it for three days. The letter will be right about the book and wrong about your feelings; both facts are permanent. On day four, only the book remains.
Editing27 April 2026 · Culture
Three rounds: abol, tona, baraka. My grandmother measured conversations in them the way editors measure essays in words. Some subjects were two-round subjects. Grief took all three, plus the fourth nobody names.
Salt Roads, continued9 April 2026 · Research Notes
Sorted the Ministry sources tonight: 212 entries. Reading the list top to bottom is embarrassing, like hearing your own voice recorded. Every obsession, alphabetized.
ResearchReading Lists
List 01
Alexievich, Secondhand Time · Hartman, Wayward Lives · Carson, Nox · McPhee, Draft No. 4 · Mengiste, The Shadow King.
List 02
Le Guin, Steering the Craft · Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences · one printed draft, one drawer, three weeks of patience.
List 03
Steedman, Dust · Trouillot, Silencing the Past · Farge, The Allure of the Archives · every finding aid I have ever loved.